The present invention has utility in the installation, maintenance and testing of a safety system. Such systems are found throughout apartment buildings, commercial spaces, and industrial, institutional, health and educational settings and the like. Typical activating devices include such sensors as smoke detectors, heat detectors, manual pull stations, carbon monoxide detectors, radiation detectors, seismic sensors, and other hazardous gases or conditions that might occur in a given setting.
Present, commercially available safety systems have multiple sensors that pass an activation signal to an alarm panel that uses the signal to activate an alarm or notification appliance such as a siren, bell, strobe light, or recorded instructions. Alternatively, or in conjunction with activation of notification appliances, the panel of a present system also activates responsive safety functions. Representative of these safety functions are door releases, smoke dampers, lock controls HVAC shutdowns, elevator recall, sprinkler systems, chemical fire suppression agents, or the like.
During installation, maintenance and subsequent testing of a present safety system, each activating device is required to be tested from start to finish (“end to end”) to the satisfaction of safety authorities, typically local authority having jurisdiction, that a given activating device in fact activates each and every notification appliance and safety function the activating device is intended to operate. By way of example, if an internal door is released and closed by a safety function, the door must be opened before a smoke detector is tested. Upon testing the smoke detector, the installer must verify that the door closed in response to smoke detector activation. For each additional detector to be tested, the door must be reopened and verified to close again. If there are a substantial number of activating devices and/or a substantial number of safety functions, the number of testing combinations grows exponentially.
Live testing of the proper operation of a present safety system by initiating a signal from a sensor and checking the activation of the appropriate notification device and/or safety function is often disturbing to occupants of the building housing the system and to avoid such disruptions during installation or testing installers or testers are motivated to use various short cuts and/or only test a select subset of the system or ignore this testing together—with or without a waiver.
When an installer or tester of a present system fails to test all the possible combinations and permutations of a system, regardless of complexity, a waiver is required to be obtained from safety authorities, as abbreviated testing endangers the safety of structure occupants. Alternatively, an installer or tester of a system may disconnect and test portions of the system separately. This does not meet the requirements of many safety codes and doesn't verify the proper start to finish, end to end, operation of the system in all situations. Additionally, this abbreviated test regime includes the risk that the installer or tester may forget to reconnect the output devices or may make a mistake while reconnecting the activating devices and effectively change the functionality of the overall system and/or forget to remove all temporary “by-pass/cut-off” methods. To mitigate the risk of failure to reconnect activating and/or output devices or make a mistake during reconnection, installers and testers have developed a number of clever techniques to help assure that all devices are reconnected including color-coded labels and part counts. However, none of these workarounds to complete system testing is foolproof and indeed often not code compliant.
Thus, there exists a need for a safety system that facilitates fail safe safety system installation maintenance and testing without undue disturbance of the building containing the system regardless of the complexity of the system.